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personal,
sticky

Welcome to my Dreamwidth!

A little about me:

You can call me Nathan. I made this journal so that I'd have somewhere I could make long posts without being limited by Tumblr's formatting problems. (The problem with that is that I don't always have the energy to make long posts!)

My interests change from day to day. Lately I've been back into Maximum Ride.

This post is a work in progress, so it may change...

What I post about the most:

Fandom history. My big project since April 2020 has been a fan archive for the Maximum Ride fandom. I'm learning a lot about HTML.

Where else you can find me:

I'm pretty active on Tumbl r.

My fic is here on AO3.

The last time I updated this post:

1 March 2023.

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Who Wrote Maximum Ride?

I'm working on a series of short essays about Maximum Ride-related topics. Here's the first, a brief investigation into... who wrote the books.

James Patterson's name may be on the cover. But who really wrote the books?

Long story short... it’s complicated.

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

challenge

Fandom Snowflake Challenge [day 2]

My big goal for this year is to be at least a little more social in fandom. (Which is why I'm doing the Fandom Snowflake Challenge.)

As part of that...

( Read more... )

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner with image of gingerbread Christmas trees, a silver ball, a tea light candle and a white confectionery snowflake on a beige falling-snowflakes background. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

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What I Did In Quarantine

I've been working on a fandom history thing, and it's finally ready to show off:

The Maximum Ride fandom archive.

What?

Maximum Ride is a YA series by James Patterson. I was very active in the fandom between approximately 2006 and 2013, and am still active in the small Tumblr community that's sprung up. I don't think it was ever a huge fandom, and it was mostly teenagers at its height. As far as I can tell, no one else on the Internet is writing about its history - OK, not like fandom history is a hugely popular topic, but still.

A funny thing happens when you're in a fandom for a long time... history starts to happen around you, and things vanish if you don't make a point of saving them. I kept finding myself saying "Oh, I'm sure I saved that on my Tumblr somewhere" when in search of an old image or fic, or trying to recount something that had happened. And then, well, I lost my job in March, and found myself with a lot of free time.

So I made a website and started writing things up.

What's on it?

A lot of things! The main theme of the site as a whole is that... it's a one-person personal project, so it's a big collection of things I remember.

There's a big central page of official content of various kinds - material that appears only in certain editions of the books, promotional videos, images that were almost lost to link rot, and more.

(If you want to see specifically some of the things one particular ad agency created, there's a page for that!)

There's another page just about the official websites that I know existed, and the kind of material they featured. There was an AIM bot you could talk to at one point!

There's a page just for the forums that existed at various points -- both the official ones, and a small number of fan forums that I remember.

Of course there's a page for fanfic and fanart -- both things I personally liked, and authors I remember being popular. It turns out I saved a lot of fanart back in the day.

My favorite page, however, is about a big collaborative fan project that I loved working on: the ARG I helped run in early 2011, prior to the release of Angel, the seventh book in the series. Together, we created images and sound files to tell the story of the rise of Itex, a megacorporation that played an important role in the backstory of the series.

There's still more stuff I want to do, but I've been working on this since April and I'm so, so excited to show it off. I hope you enjoy it.

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A Guided Tour of the Maximum Ride Forums

This will probably be the first in a series of posts, but I can't make any promises about how many or when I'll post them. Sorry.

Between 2006 and 2013, I was extremely active in the fandom for James Patterson's YA series, Maximum Ride. It is still very close to my heart, but its popularity was transient, and the major fan forums that once existed are all gone.

However, I have access to archive.org and no self-control. So let's have a look around.

( Read more... )

This is a very niche topic, so I apologize if you're here for things that are not deep dives into obscure fan forums. Fandom history fascinates me, and since I hadn't seen anyone else posting about the history of the Maximum Ride fandom, I decided to take it upon myself.

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Wax Cylinders And You

Sorry for being gone so long. I'm still figuring out the precise work/life balance where I can have time to write posts when I'm at home, not just come home and fall asleep.

I wrote this post for my Tumblr late last year, and just never got around to crossposting it.

Without further ado: a quick course in wax cylinders.

How did people actually talk, way back in the 1910s? How can we find out?

Well, there's one answer: we can listen to them.

( Read more... )

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R. C. Sherriff on writing Journey's End

One thing that R. C. Sherriff discusses in his autobiography, No Leading Lady, is the process of writing Journey's End. I found this passage fascinating, but it's relatively long, so it took me a good deal of time to transcribe. That transcription follows the LJ-cut, and is itself followed by my commentary.

imgur album of the scanned pages.

( Read more... )

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Variety, 20 February 1929

Here's an excerpt from the 20 February 1929 edition of Variety; this is from Hannen Swaffer's column "London As It Looks". Mostly I found this of interest because it's a relatively early review of Journey's End, appearing in an American publication as part of their regular feature on recent happenings in London.

Also he says nice things about Colin Clive, so I couldn't not post this.

( Click to read the excerpt... )
Notes:

Swaffer made a couple of obvious mistakes - the play is set in March, not May; Sherriff is spelled with two Rs - and drops a couple references that have become a little esoteric. (Translation: I had to go Google some of this.)

"Tallulah bedroom scene" - Tallulah Bankhead was then working in the theatre in London, and was well-known for her larger-than-life personality.

Jed Harris, Arthur Hopkins, and [David] Belasco were all American theatre producers. Harris and Hopkins were still relatively early in their careers; Belasco was nearly at the end of his.

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what thou seest

I kept telling myself to wait before I posted this, but my nitpicking was beginning to reach critical levels, so without further preamble, here it is, the first half of the Journey's End fic I've been mentioning.

title: what thou seest

fandom: Journey's End + H. P. Lovecraft (Randolph Carter stories)

wordcount: 8.9k

rating: T

summary: Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter. Dennis Stanhope survives the war, quits drinking, and makes some new friends - with a few detours along the way.

excerpt: At some point he falls asleep. There are no dreams that he can remember, but he wakes up – sometime in the early evening, judging from the quality of the light – with his heart pounding. His thoughts are in disorder.

I’ve been here before, he thinks. I’ve been here before.

Many thanks are due to

missanthropicprinciple for chatting with me about this play/movie.

The second half is still in progress. Once it's done I'm going to put together a post with some recommended further reading, because I've gone through an alarming amount of material while writing this.

In non-fic news: transcribing an excerpt from R. C. Sherriff's autobiography No Leading Lady about the process of writing Journey's End. It's a lengthy excerpt to retype, but my scans of the relevant pages didn't turn out very well, and I think his description of the writing process is worth discussing.

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Articles about the Spanish Flu

If you're interested in the Spanish Flu, here are some articles & books I've found valuable. Gina Kolata's book, or John M. Barry's article, are pretty good starting points.

John M. Barry. "How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America". Smithsonian magazine, November 2017.

Carol Byerly. Fever of War: The Influenza Epidemic in the U. S. Army during World War I, NYU Press, 2005.

Carol Byerly. "The U.S. Military and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919". Public Health Reports vol. 125 Suppl 3, Suppl 3 (2010): 82-91.

Gina Kolata. Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It. Touchstone, 2001.

David M. Morens, Anthony S. Fauci. "The 1918 Influenza Pandemic: Insights for the 21st Century", The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 195, Issue 7, 1 April 2007: 1018–1028.

Jeffrey Taubenberger and David M Morens. "1918 Influenza: the mother of all pandemics". Emerging Infectious Diseases vol. 12,1 (2006): 15-22.

Vikki Valentine. "Origins of the 1918 Pandemic: The Case for France". NPR.org, 20 February 2006.

Peter C. Wever and Leo van Bergen. "Death from 1918 pandemic influenza during the First World War: a perspective from personal and anecdotal evidence". Influenza and other respiratory viruses, vol. 8,5 (2014): 538-46.

...and while I'm here, relevant fic news: 8000 words in, and the first half is almost complete.

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personal

A brief update

Sorry to disappoint with the lack of updates recently. I've been working on a fanfiction that's turning into an absolute monster on me, and thus haven't had much time to edit images / transcribe text to post here.

A fanfiction about what? Glad you asked!

Answering the question no one was asking, about what happens after Journey's End. So far I've racked up 3000 words, with no sign of stopping any time soon. When I finish it up, I'll post it here as well as AO3, so no worries about missing out on extremely specific fanfiction.

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W. Scott Poole on Journey's End

W. Scott Poole's book Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror has only been out a couple months, but I feel comfortable saying it's a good survey of how the experience of WWI shaped horror fiction in the decades immediately following.
( Read more... )Overall I'd recommend buying this book, though I have a couple small qualms*. Here's a link to the publisher's website, which offers a couple ways to get your hands on a copy.

* Namely, I wish there were an index, and I mildly disagree with his assessment that At the Mountains of Madness was Lovecraft's only novel. However, Poole has written and published a biography of Lovecraft, and I, uh, have a blog, so...

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Exhibitor's Herald-World, December 1929

I'm still working on transcribing a couple articles, so here are a couple more pictures for you.

Transcripts follow each image.
( Read more... )

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Tiffany-Stahl Productions advertisement for Journey's End

In August 1929, Tiffany-Stahl Productions ran a long-ish ad about their upcoming releases in a number of trade magazines for theater owners. The ad started with a spread dedicated to Journey's End, which Tiffany-Stahl were very proud to have acquired. Here's a copy of that spread.

Transcripts of the text follow the images. Click to view at a larger size.

( Read more... )

Image source: Motion Picture News, 10 August 1929.

This ad also ran in other magazines that month, such as the 17 August edition of Exhibitor's Herald World, and a black-and-white version in Variety on 7 August.

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Behind the scenes on Journey's End

Two images showing the filming of some of the battle scenes in Journey's End. Click the pictures to view them at a larger size. The source links are to archived versions of each magazine.

( Read more... )

This post would not exist without the Media History Project.

I'm going to write more in the future about the articles these photos come from, but I figured this blog could use a few more images.

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links,
lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft's Commonplace Book

I'm not sure the exact source of this, but I ran across it the other day and thought it might be of interest. It seems to cover approximately 1918 - 1935, and is essentially a list of brief story ideas or concepts that Lovecraft wrote down.

H. P. Lovecraft's Commonplace Book - Bruce Sterling

Excerpt:

159 Certain kind of deep-toned stately music of the style of the 1870’s or 1880’s recalls certain visions of that period—gas-litten parlours of the dead, moonlight on old floors, decaying business streets with gas lamps, etc.—under terrible circumstances.

[I am still busy with finals, by the way, but figured I'd drop by for five minutes to post some content.]

Entry tags:

links,
lovecraft

Lovecraft & Environmental Horror

This article is a little old, but I think it's a unique take on the continued appeal of Lovecraft.

H. P. Lovecraft, Master of Environmental Horror - Robert Rath

Excerpt:

...not all Lovecraft stories are getting less frightening. While one Lovecraftian theme loses its edge, another—the tainted landscape—is more relevant than ever. Because here’s what our society is scared of: being poisoned.

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personal

(no subject)

It's been a long six years (!) but that's it, today was my last day of college classes. My finals run over the weekend, but after Tuesday evening, I'm a free man. What a horrible prospect!

The other day I did the math and, subtracting the three semesters where I had to withdraw or could not attend (due to being chronically ill), it really took me about four and a half years to finish this degree. It's taken me some interesting places, but I've got to say I'm ready to be done.

Anyway, there's your update on my personal life. Posted some "Herbert West - Reanimator" fanfiction last night -- once it's all done I'll post it here as well. Now, back to studying.

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Some notes on language in James Whale's Frankenstein

(Based on a post I made on 30 January 2016.)

Here's a fun (read: heartbreaking) note about Frankenstein (1931): listen to the dialogue in the first few scenes after the creation.

Here are some of Henry's lines from his dialogue with Waldman:

"He’s only a few days old, remember."

"You must be patient. Do you expect perfection at once?"

"His brain must be given time to develop."

"I believe in this ‘monster’, as you call it."

By the end of that first conversation with his old mentor, Waldman's dehumanizing language is rubbing off on Henry, but the transformation isn't complete until the creature kills Fritz.

(In, by the way, completely-understandable self-defense.)

Until that point, despite the change Waldman is working on his thought processes, Henry still believes his creation is essentially good. It's the realization that his monstrous son is capable of violence that sparks Henry's nervous collapse.

And even then: Henry remains oddly passive -- well, at least, compared with Victor in the novel, who grows increasingly paranoid as events unfold, and, at last, takes to carrying a gun with him everywhere he goes.

Which is something I'm still turning over in my head, because I'm not sure exactly how to read the whole character of Henry Frankenstein. A lot of the power of that character comes from the way Colin Clive carries himself: nervous politeness, restrained tension, slowly fraying emotional control.

But a lot comes from the words he says -- at last, I come back around to the nominal topic of this post -- and it's worth saying that, uh, the dialogue in this movie definitely reads as off.

There's probably a really good reason that the only lines anybody remembers from Frankenstein are spoken by Colin Clive: he brings exactly the correct charge of sheer nervous energy to the role, and it makes even clunky technobabble sparkle. Without his voice, the words of Henry Frankenstein sound empty and bloodless; with it, they're electric.

...pun intended.